Recent advances in historical pragmatics and historical sociopragmatics have clearly delineated the focus of these areas on contextualised interaction-oriented micro and macro studies based on the linguistic evidence from the past. In particular, historical (im)politeness/facework and ritual as well as specific discourse domains, such as the courtroom, medical discourse and epistolary texts have received a lot of attention.

Historical sociopragmatics has also prompted significant paradigm shifts in historical linguistics, among others, by foregrounding the importance of a new unit of analysis: the community of practice derived from the contemporary discursive framework. The nearly two decades that have passed since Andreas Jucker's seminal publication (Historical Pragmatics 1995) provide an excellent opportunity for inviting researchers in the area to join us in Poznan for a symposium devoted to the most recent advances in the discipline.